She and I were sitting on the couch. We overheard our roommates making out. They were moaning so loudly. I was impressed, actually, because the wife always seemed a little frigid to me.

She turned to me and said it was making her jealous and horny. She complained how it had been so long since she’d had sex. Since she’d broken up with her boyfriend. She said “I wish I was having sex right now!” I didn’t really know her, but I felt that normal human empathetic response washing over me. Everyone should get to get off.

I thought about telling her she should sleep with you. I thought if you and I talked about it first and I gave you express permission and it came out of some place of caring and empathy, I might actually think it was great. Like in The Big Chill. The one woman really wants to get pregnant, so her friend gives her permission to sleep with her husband. In the morning, it’s so cute because they all love each other and are friends. It’s as if they think what’s a fuck amongst friends? Just helping out a friend in need. I have always found that moment inspirational.

This was a little different, mind you, because it’s not like she had some biological clock ticking and I was trying to help out a friend. I barely knew her; I just wanted her to get laid for the fun of it, and I thought you might be the right person for the job.

Before I ever had a chance to bring it up with you, I walked in on you on top of her. In our bed. With all the lights on. You looked up when I opened the door. I will never get that look out of my head. I slammed the door shut and you got up and turned off the light. I could hear her moaning from outside. It didn’t make me feel loving and excited or glad that people were enjoying sex. It didn’t make me feel jealous or horny. It didn’t make me wish I was having sex. It made me so repulsed I got physically ill.

It’s nothing like The Big Chill if you don’t get to give your permission. There is nothing sweet or loving or fun about it. Nothing inspirational. It made me surprised I had wanted her to get laid so badly. You’ll have to excuse me for not being Big or Chill about it.

Tell yer friends!

Like this:

hello darling. first things first; i love you. i wish you were here. it’s Sunday in Haiti and the sight unfolding before my eyes is impressionable. i can tell you would like this; it’s one of those moments when I realize why we get on so well. driving on the battered roads of the Central Plateau below the massive mountains steep incline, the lives of rural Haitians and their Sunday customs have turned the desolate roadway into the density of 5th avenue right where Central Park starts. Old women in huge sunhats and their best white, blue, red, black dresses with matching heels and tall men and short men in suits wiping the sweat from their brow and the children in their shirts and ties ride bicycles as their parade deposits each of them at the gates of one heaven or another. Next to the sugar cane fields, and the slumping wooden houses, and the lonely banana trees sit the churches of the Evengelicals, Baptists, Catholics, Adventists, and Voodists. the humidity is thick enough to taste like in childhood. i thought of you as the masses, in their Sunday best, poured down the road as if propelled by something great, something undoubtedly unknown. the entire morning felt like the past. like a Toni Morisson novel. or an Otis Redding song. or a Cadillac’s tires scraping the gravel of a parking lot in 1963. it was Sunday, in Haiti, and people, poor as the dirt they walked on, dressed to the nines on their way to worship, were momentarily relieved to not have a care in the world.

darling, i figured you would like this. i always hoped this scene could exist; and today it did.

When you got those flower petals stuck in your hair, I wanted to tackle you to the ground and kiss you.
When you left that note in my wallet, I wanted to hold your hand leaving the restaurant.
When you text me innuendos, I want to respond with blatantly dirty, inappropriate things.
When I was a teenager, I thought you would never want me.
Now that I know you do want me, it’s too late.
But I just want to hold your hand and kiss you and wake up next to you, even if it’s only for a day or a week or a moment. Every fiber of my being wants to cross the line with you. How did we miss our chance?

Like this:

You will not call or reach for me while it matters. I feel like I am swimming in a strong current. I want to just forget you immediately and reach the shore. But I am instead pushing against the current of still wanting you. The professor of past experience in my head knows men like you. You have already power-boated away from me. While I bob around in the wake sputtering and swallowing salt water. It tastes awful. It burns my throat. I want to snap my fingers and be on dry land, back where I was before I met you. Taking a night class, filling out a graduate school application, roaming around the city curious, lonely but contented. I have to slog and fight to breath and move forward. I have to methodically carefully propel myself back to the safety of solid ground. If I panic or spend too much time treading water and distracted by watching you leave, I will be lost. It will get harder and harder. I put my head back in the swirling water, frightened, abandoned, and drive my body towards shore. Arms moving in time with legs, breathing steady. I cannot be dragged down.

for
your skin, your eyes, your smirk,
the stories you tell, the funny noises you make to describe something ridiculous,
your embrace, your fingers in my hair, your mouth,
your toe tapping energetically,
the way you hold the steering wheel when you drive,
the disc-shaped scar on your left shoulder,
for you.

Tell yer friends!

Like this:

I had this roommate E. She was a bitch in that way where she would flirt with the guy I was dating when she was smooshed next to him in the back seat of the car. I couldn’t hear exactly what she said to him because she whispered it in his ear and the radio was on. I couldn’t prove she had hit on him, but I knew in my gut she had. She was the type of bitch men would pay rent for and help through grad school. And still want to be with her even after she cheated. I couldn’t figure it out. Does she have a gold dust pussy?

When you were married you killed yourself working overtime to provide a house and everything else for your ex-wife and the three kids you had together. You took care of the three kids, toddlers at the time, while she went out partying until 3am and then slept the whole next day. You asked her to stay even after you knew she was cheating with a mutual acquaintance. Even after she moved out. After you divorced, she married that mutual acquaintance. Now he’s killing himself working overtime to pay for the house and the two new kids she had with him. Gold dust pussy?

When you stayed over at my house I got up with you at 5am to cuddle with you and feed you snacks for breakfast while the coffee brewed. I made sure you felt respected and secure when we went out together and men hit on me. I told you how happy it made me to spend time with you-that I thought you were a beautiful man. You dumped me this past week. At the month mark where I always get dumped. No gold dust. I’m just a pussy.